{"id":38244,"date":"2023-10-20T14:55:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/from-hating-life-to-launching-a-startup-how-angela-liang-discovered-lustr-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:55:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:55:08","slug":"from-hating-life-to-launching-a-startup-how-angela-liang-discovered-lustr-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/from-hating-life-to-launching-a-startup-how-angela-liang-discovered-lustr-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"From hating life to launching a startup: How Angela Liang discovered Lustr – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Angela<\/div>\n

When Angela Liang took a break from corporate life to pursue more creative interests in Sydney, she had no idea she would end up launching her own tech startup.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to be in mergers and acquisitions in the first part of my career, I was a typical Asian nerd,\u201d she tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI went into banking in Hong Kong, got over it in three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pretty much hated my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

This prompted Liang to take some time off and soon she stumbled into an industry that has always fascinated her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up getting into fashion completely by accident,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

After helping a friend with photo shoots \u201cfor fun\u201d, Liang\u2019s work started to get noticed and soon she entered a new career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realised people kind of like what I\u2019m doing so I started hustling and reaching out to people in the industry, I managed to start shooting full-time within two months,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Angela<\/p>\n

During this process, Liang worked closely with up and coming designers and she started to uncover some pervasive problems.<\/p>\n

Many of the designers she met struggled with production and marketing costs as they tried to get noticed against big brands.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how big [the designers] were or how long they were doing this, I just kept hearing the same problems,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany are a one-man band, they\u2019re trying to do everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using her business acumen, Liang would offer advice and support over coffees to these \u201ccreative geniuses\u201d but knew a better solution was needed to save this market.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if they\u2019re super talented and people love them they\u2019re just not getting seen,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

And so sparked the idea for Lustr, a platform for emerging designers to connect with an online community, where they can be intelligently matched with customers, gather insights on collections before launching into costly production and promote their own stores.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a nutshell, it essentially matches shoppers with emerging designers that suit their style,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Lustr is not a marketplace, rather a place for people to create style-sensitive profiles that connect them with new designers.<\/p>\n

Users can be matched against categories like \u201cminimal\u201d, \u201cglam\u201d or \u201ccasual\u201d and can also feed in additional data for a smarter match.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterally, you put in your gender, age group, the kind of products you\u2019re interested in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you enter that and you create your profile you can then look at more specific things like certain colour palettes, ethical practices or options for customisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The driving force of Lustr will be the community it creates for designers to communicate and interact with customers, and where shoppers themselves can play an influential role in the shaping of the local designer market, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesigners can showcase upcoming styles,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019re releasing certain [items], they can ask what colour you\u2019d like to see it in. That way the shoppers that have already matched to the designer\u2019s style can give their sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this idea to transform Australia’s emerging\u00a0designer market, Liang entered a local hackathon.<\/p>\n

Find out what happens in part two of Angela Liang’s story, coming out next Monday.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Angela Liang took a break from corporate life to pursue more creative interests in Sydney, she had no idea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}